For Wisdom of the Shire, Look No Further: Q&A With Author Noble Smith (Part 2)

Yesterday, we ran Part 1 of our interview with Noble Smith, author of the new book The Wisdom of the Shire: A Short Guide to a Long and Happy Life. We had such a geekerrific time chatting with him about all things Tolkien and The Hobbit, we kinda lost track of time. So we decided to divide our geek-out into two parts. Here’s Part 2 of our conversation, wherein we discuss the relationship between Goldman Sachs and Tolkien; the potential for iPad gardening apps; how freakishly young Elijah Wood still looks after all these years; and why GeekDads everywhere should cherish their time with their kids.

Gilsdorf: I couldn’t help but notice how some of the advice and discussion in your book touched on recent politics and news — i.e. where you look at the Scouring of the Shire as it relates to the current banking and financial mess, equating Goldman Sachs raiders with Lotho “Sachsville-Baggins.” You also rail against the Patriot Act. Was it hard to resist drawing more parallels between the politics of Middle-earth and the politics of today?

Smith: I couldn’t leave out those parallels. If you read Tolkien’s letters you get a sense for what kind of a man he was. He hated the idea of “whiskered men with bombs” running the world. He couldn’t stand the fact that the natural world he loved so much was being despoiled. This was a guy who talked to his favorite trees!

My thing with Goldman Sachs is personal. I live in a beautiful little college town (near the Canadian border) that’s a model for sustainability in the country. And yet Goldman Sachs is behind a scheme to build one of the largest coal dumps in North America (at a place called Cherry Point) twenty miles from my house! They want to transport 50 million metric tons of coal here every year by rail from Wyoming, and then ship it to China in bulk freighters where it will be burned in factories, significantly contributing to global climate change. And all of those heavy metals and other pollutants burned in China come back on the jet stream and poison water supplies up and down the west coast.

Anyway, these Goldman Sachs guys are like Saruman coming into Hobbiton and making a pig’s breakfast of the place — turning the pond at Bywater into a black pool of toxic sludge. And we’re the little hobbits trying to keep this from happening in our own version of the Shire. These megacorporations have the money and might, but we’ve got the soul. “Even the smallest person can change the future,” to quote Galadriel. Sometimes you have to take a stand and scour the Shire. But all this climate change stuff is just a bunch of crap, right? I guess a behemoth hurricane in the Northeast at the end of October is just an aberration.

Gilsdorf: We as a culture clearly identify with The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Why has Middle-earth come to be so precious (pun intended) to so many readers? What ultimately did Tolkien tap into that makes his stories do powerful?

Smith: Peter S. Beagle (the author of The Last Unicorn and the “Introduction” to The Lord of the Rings) wrote in his essay “Tolkien’s Magic Ring”: “Something of ourselves has gone into reading it, and so it belongs to us.” These books become a part of our DNA. And they deserve to be. They will stand the test of time. Someday people will speak of Shakespeare and Tolkien in the same breath. You wrote in your book [Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks] that Gary Gygax (the creator of Dungeons & Dragons) taught us how to be Bards — to tell stories. Which I totally agree with. Well, Tolkien was “The Great Bard.”

Gilsdorf: What do you think Tolkien would have thought of your book — a sort of self-help, how to live a better life book based on the ideas and themes of his books. Would he approve?

Smith: I think Tolkien would have thought my book was rubbish! Actually, he probably would have been secretly pleased. But he hated people trying to find metaphors in his work. All of the wisdom he learned in his life is contained in those books, however. All of his beautiful, crazy visions are infused with deeper meaning. In The Silmarillion he wrote that the Elves used to make beautiful objects and leave them on the beaches for other Elves to find and enjoy. That’s what he did with his books.

Gilsdorf: I love how The Wisdom of the Shire ends with instructions on how to make your own hobbit garden. Me, sometimes I just want to be a hobbit, work in my garden, drink, eat and read books, and not be bothered by the troubles of the world. Talk about that a little — what does gardening do for us? The agrarian life? Why do you think we all want to be hobbits?

A hobbit garden awaits: What Hobbiton and The Shire looked like between the filming of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. In Matamata, New Zealand. (Photo credit: Ethan Gilsdorf)

Smith: Isn’t having a little garden the most amazing thing? I just love planting seeds with my kids, then watch them explode into these crazy plants bursting with life. I call them “slow fireworks.” My son and daughter graze on food from our garden — they fight over strawberries like a couple of hobbits. And they love going to their grandpa and grandma’s house where my dad (whom we call “The Gaffer”) has this massive garden. They would stay in there all day if they could. Tolkien wrote that the hobbits had “a close friendship with the earth.” When you garden you establish this kind of connection with our Earth. It grounds you to the world and makes you feel a part of the ancient rhythm of life. Some jackass is probably making a garden app right now so you can simulate having a garden on your iPad. Don’t buy it! Get some real dirt, and, as John Lennon sang, “Dig it!”

Gilsdorf: OK, geek out time. The Hobbit movies — excited? What are you most looking forward to seeing?

Smith: Oh man! I can’t wait to go see this with my son. We’ll be there on opening day. I think I’m most excited about seeing Hobbiton come to life again. And it’s so cool that Elijah Wood and Ian Holm are reprising their roles. Wood looks exactly the same, doesn’t he? It’s freaky. But you have to remember — he’d still be considered a “tween” in the Shire (he hasn’t yet come of age at 33). Or maybe he really does have the Ring.

The dwarves from The Hobbit poster. Will Peter Jackson’s version play up the relationships among the characters, or the action scenes? asks Noble Smith. (Image: Warner Bros. Pictures/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures)

Gilsdorf: Are you at all upset at Peter Jackson for turning a slim volume into a trilogy?

Smith: Hell, no! I would watch a 40 hour-long TV adaptation of The Hobbit, let alone The Hobbit/Dol Guldur story they’re going to tell. Gandalf is gone from the book version of The Hobbit for almost four months. During that time he’s off fighting The Necromancer (aka Sauron) in the fortress of Dol Guldur in southern Mirkwood. Jackson & Co. have all of this material to use to fill in that gap: Tolkien’s posthumously published Unfinished Tales, the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings, etc.). I think they’re going to come up with a narrative that will blow people away. And then we’ll all buy the extended director’s cuts and bitch about how they left out something crucial from the theatrical releases, just like most of us did when we saw the director’s cuts of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Gilsdorf: Biggest mistake/error that Peter Jackson made in adapting the Lord of the Rings, and your worse fear for The Hobbit?

Smith: I think The Two Towers suffered from too much violence and action sequences. I hated silly things like Legolas surfing on a shield down the stairs at Helm’s Deep. I despised the whole Aragorn goes off the cliff attached to the warg bit. I wanted more human interaction. That’s what I cared about the most. The Lord of the Rings is essentially a tale of friendship. The battles are secondary. So [in The Hobbit] I hope we really get to see Bilbo developing relationships with Thorin and the other Dwarves. Bilbo leaves his sheltered life and basically goes to war. But he keeps his “humanity” or rather his “Hobbitness” intact.

The profound lesson of The Hobbit is that Bilbo gives up all of his share of the treasure (by handing over the Arkenstone to the Elves) to stop a battle. He doesn’t want to see his beloved Dwarves butchered. When he gets back to the Shire he spends the rest of his life gardening, writing, taking walks, and raising his adopted son. He’s the first stay-at-home single dad in the history of literature! Like Tolkien Bilbo is a lover of peace who only fights when he has to.

Gilsdorf: Anything else you’d like to add?

Smith: To all you GeekDads out there: Cherish the time you have with your kids. It’s worth more than gold. The Wisdom of the Shire says, “Life and Hobbits are short. But love is forged onto your soul for eternity.”

Noble Smith is an award-winning playwright who has worked as a documentary film executive producer, video game writer and media director for an international human rights organization. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and children. To read more about Noble Smith and his book, visit www.shirewisdom.com or follow him on Twitter @shirewisdom.

Writer, journalist, poet and geek Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. More info fantasyfreaksbook.com or follow on Facebook fantasyfreaksbook .